Up until recently, I never knew that the song- "CASE" by TENI was crooned by a woman. I was in utter shock when someone pointed that out to me and even showed me the video, and then it hit me; This entire song was clearly written for a girl judging by the lyrics and there are a few lines from the lyrics that punctuates this.....
1: "Cos my baba no be Dangote or Adeleke but we go dey ok"- Now this part is an assumption that she's going to be the bread winner and in Nigerian society, having a female bread winner is often frowned upon, so this leads me to believe that it was clearly written for a girl while singing from the perspective of a man.
2: "I go go Oshodi for your case, I go slap agbero for your case"- Now these are all things typically done by men or rather things you'd expect to be coming from a man. No woman goes to Oshodi or slaps agbero for a man.3: "If na to chop indomie, we go chop. If na to suck garri, we go suck"- Now again, she's assuming the role of bread winner, the kind of sentiments you'd expect from a typical Nigerian man.Now even though she made a veiled attempt to juxtapose the song's narrative with a man in the video, it doesn't hide the fact that she clearly wasn't singing for a man.I often scoff at people who say "your sexuality is just a part of you, it's not who you are". I call BS on that!!. Your sexuality is a huge part of who you are and determines how you express yourself and experience the world in general. It shapes your thoughts, words and feelings and often shows in endeavours you embark on. It plays a huge role on how you react to the outside world.Teni is a woman who wears a do-rag, T-shirts and oversized pants and by all intents and purposes, she's very butch. She's more masculine than I am even without a beard and a penis, and she's almost universally loved and adored by all Nigerians who know her. And she's just referred to as "Tom boy". Ironic right??
The hypocrisy of the Nigerian society never misses its chance to amaze me. In a stark contrast, a man wearing female clothes while being very effeminate will attract an almost instant hostility from Nigerians, a good case study of this is Bobrisky (I'm well aware that there are other reasons people despise h/im/er, but that's not the point of this post). But why is this so? Why is the expression of masculinity applauded regardless of which gender it's coming from, while femininity is only accepted when it comes from the female gender?
This comes from a deep seated misogynistic culture in this country (Nigeria), reinforced by patriarchy and religion, where masculinity is seen as superior and much preferable to femininity and something to aspire to, while femininity is something to avoid entirely especially if you're male.Until we evolve as a society (which I've already given up hope on at this point), this will continue to be the trend.
I listened to the song once and couldn't stop humming it in my head, it's quite enjoyable. Much love Teni "Case"
Article Credit:
Dr. Prince Nnamdi Nwachukwu
